PROVINCIAL RULERS.
Russia is divided into provinces, each of which is ruled by a governor
and a vice-governor named by the crown.
A dozen years ago the governor and his lieutenant was each a petty
Tsar--doing what he pleased in his department, and answering only now
and then, like a Turkish pasha, by forfeiture of office, for the
public good. Charged with the maintenance of public order, he was
armed with a power as terrible as that of the imperial police--the
right to suspect his neighbor of discontent, and act on this bare
suspicion as though the fault were proved in a court of law. In
England and the United States the word suspicion has lost its use, and
well-nigh lost its sense. Our officers of police are not permitted to
"suspect" a thief. They must either take him in the fact or leave him
alone. From Calais to Perm, however, the word "suspicion" is still a
name of fear; for in all the countries lying between the English
Channel and the Ural Mountains, "ordre superieure" is a force to which
rights of man and courts of law must equally give way.
The governor, or vice-governor, of a Russian province, representing
his sovereign lord, might find, or fancy that he found, some reason to
suspect a man of disaffection to the crown. He might be wrong, he
might even be absurdly wrong. The man might be loyal as himself; might
even be in a position to prove that loyalty in open court; and yet his
innocence would avail him nothing. Proofs are idle when the courts are
not open to appeal; and judges have no power to hear the facts. "Done
by superior orders," was the answer to all cries and protests. A
resistless power was about his feet, and he was swept away by a force
from which there was no appeal--not even to the ruling prince; and the
victim of an erring, perhaps a malicious, governor, had no resource
against the wrong, except in resignation to what might seem to be the
will of God.
The men who could use and abuse this terrible power were many. Russia
is divided into forty-nine provinces, besides the kingdom of Poland,
the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Empire of Siberia, the khanates and
principalities of the Caucasus. In these forty-nine provinces the
governors and vice-governors had the power to exile any body on mere
suspicion of political discontent. In other regions of the empire this
power was even more diffused than it was in the purely Russian
districts. Taking all the Russians in one mass, there can hardly have
been less than two hundred men (excluding the police) who could seize
a citizen in the name of public order, and condemn him, unheard, to
live in any part of the empire from the Persian frontiers to the Polar
Sea.
The Princess V----, a native of Podolia, young, accomplished, wealthy,
was loved by all her friends, adored by all the young men of her
province. One happy youth possessed her heart, and this young man was
worthy of the fortune he had won. Their days of courtship passed, and
they were looking forward to the day when they would wear together
their sacred crowns; but then an unseen agent crossed their path and
broke their hearts. Some days before their betrothal should have taken
place, an officer of police appeared at the lover's door with a
peremptory order for him to quit Poltava for the distant government of
Perm. Taken from his house at a moment's notice, he was hurried to the
general office of police, where his papers were made out, and, being
put into a common cart, he was whisked away in the company of two
gendarmes. A month was occupied in his journey; two or three months
elapsed before his friends in Podolia knew that he was safe. He found
a friend in the mountain town, by whom his life as an exile was made a
little less rugged than it might have been. An advocate was won for
him at court; the senate was moved, though cautiously, in his behalf;
and at the end of two years his tormentor was persuaded to relax his
grip. But though he was suffered to leave his place of banishment, he
was forbidden to return to his native town.
The princess kept her faith to him--staying in Podolia while he was
still at Perm; living down the suspicions in which they were both
involved--and joined him at St. Petersburg so soon as he got leave to
enter that city. There they were married, and there I met them in
society. Not a cloud is on their fame. They are free to go and come,
except that they must not live in their native town. No power save
that which sent the bridegroom into exile can recall them to their
home. Yet down to this hour the gentleman has never been able to
ascertain the nature of his offense.
In time the country will free herself from this Asiatic abuse of
power. With bold but cautious hand the Emperor has felt his way. His
governors of provinces have been told to act with prudence; not to
think of sending men into exile unless the case is flagrant, and only
then after reference of all the facts to St. Petersburg.
Some dozen years ago, before the new reforms had taken hold, and
officers in the public service had come to count on the appeal being
heard, a case occurred which allows one to give, in the form of an
anecdote, a picture of the evils now being slowly rooted out. Count
A----, a young vice-governor, fresh from college, came to live in a
certain town of the Black Soil country. Fond of dogs and horses, fond
of wines and dinners, the young gentleman found his official income
far below his wants. He took "his own" (what Russian officials used to
call vzietka) from every side; for he loved to keep his house open,
his stable full, his card-room merry; and a nice house, a good stable,
and a merry card-room, cost a good many rubles in the year. He was
lucky with his cards--luckier, some losers said, than a perfectly
honest player should be; yet the two ends of his income and his outgo
never could be made to meet.
The treasurer of the town was Andrew Ivanovitch Gorr, a man of peasant
birth, who had been sent to college, and, after taking a good degree,
had been put into the civil service, where, by his soft ways, his
patient deference to those above him, and his perfect loyalty to his
trust, he had risen to the post of treasurer in this provincial town.
Count A---- called Andrew into his chamber, and bade him, with a
careless gesture, pay a small debt for him. Andrew bowed, and waited
for the rubles. A---- just waived him off; but seeing that he would
not take the hint, the count said, "Yes, yes, pay the debt; we will
arrange it in the afternoon." Then Andrew paid the money, and in less
than a week he was asked to pay again. From week to week he went on
paying, with due submission to his chief, but with an inward doubt as
to whether this paying would come out well. Twice or thrice the count
was good enough to speak of his affairs, and even to name a day when
the money which he was taking from the public coffers should be
replaced. In the mean time the debt was every week increasing in
amount; so that the provincial chest was all but drained to pay the
vice-governor's personal debts.
Andrew was in despair, for the day was fast coming round when the
Imperial auditors would come to revise his books and count the money
in his box. Unless the fund was restored before they came he would be
lost; for the balance was in his charge, and the count could hardly
cover his default. On Andrew telling his wife what he had been drawn,
by his habit of obeying orders, into doing, he was urged by that sage
adviser to go at once to the governor and beg him to replace the cash
before the auditors arrived.
"The auditors will come next week?" asked A----. "All will be well. I
will send a messenger to my estates. In five days he will come back,
and the money shall be paid. Prepare a draft of the account, and bring
it to my house, with the proper receipt and seal."
On the fifth day the auditors arrived, a little before their time; and
being eager to push on, they named the next morning, at ten o'clock,
for going into the accounts. The treasurer ran to the palace, and saw
the count in his public room, surrounded by his secretaries. "It is
well," he said to Andrew, with his pleasant smile; "the messenger has
come back with the money; bring the paper and the receipt to my
smoking-room at ten o'clock to-night, and we'll put the account to
rights."
Andrew was at his door by ten o'clock with the statement of his debts,
and a receipt for the money. "Yes," said the count, dropping his eye
down the line of figures, "the account is just--fifteen thousand seven
hundred rubles. Let me look at the receipt. Yes, that is well drawn.
You deserve to be promoted, Andrew! Talents like yours are lost in a
provincial town. You ought to be a minister of state! Oblige me by
asking my man to come in."
A servant entered.
"Go up to the madame, and ask her if she can come down stairs for a
moment," said the count. The servant slipped away, and the count,
while waiting for his return, made many jokes and pleasantries, so
that the time ran swiftly past. He kept the papers in his hand.
When Andrew saw that it was near eleven o'clock, he ventured to ask if
the man was not long in coming. "Long," exclaimed the vice-governor,
starting up, "an age. Where can the fellow be? He must have fallen
asleep on the stairs."
Going out of the room in search of him, the count closed the door
behind him, saying, "Wait a few minutes; I will go myself." Andrew sat
still as a stone. He noticed that the count had taken with him the
schedule of debts and the signed receipt. He felt uneasy in his mind.
He stared about the room, and counted the beatings of the clock. His
head grew hot; his heart was beating with a throb that could be heard.
No other sound broke the night; and when he opened the door and put
his ear to the passage, the silence seemed to him like that of a
crypt.
The clock struck twelve.
Leaping up from his stupor, he banged the door and shouted up the
stairs, but no one answered him; and snatching a fearful daring from
his misery, he ran along several corridors until he tripped and fell
over a man in a great fur cloak. "Get up, and show me to the
vice-governor's room," said Andrew fiercely, on which the domestic
shook his cloak and rubbed his eyes. "The vice-governor's room?" "Yes,
fellow; come, be quick." The man led him back to the room he had left;
which was, in fact, the private reception-room. "Stay here, and I will
seek him." Shortly the man returned with news that his master was in
bed. "In bed!" cried Andrew, more and more excited; "go to him again,
and ask him if he has forgotten me. Tell him I am waiting his return."
A minute later he came back to say the count was fast asleep, and that
his valet dared not wake him for the world. "Asleep!" groaned the poor
treasurer; "you must awake him. I can not leave without seeing him. It
is the Emperor's service, and will not wait."
At the Emperor's name the servant said he would try again. An hour of
misery went by before he came to say the count was in bed, and would
not see him. If he had business to transact, he must come another day,
and at the reception hour.
In a moment Andrew was at the count's door and in his room, to which
the noise brought up a dozen people. "What is this tumult all about?"
frowned the count, rising sharply in his bed. "Tumult!" said Andrew,
waxing hot with terror; "I want the rubles." "Rubles!" said the count,
with feigned astonishment; "what rubles do you mean?" "The rubles we
have taken from the provincial coffer." "That we have taken from the
coffer! We? What we? What rubles? Go to bed, man, and forget your
dreams."
"Then give me back my paper and receipt."
"Paper and receipt!" said the count, with affected pity; "look to him
well. See him safe home; and tell his wife to look that he does not
wander in his sleep. He might fall into the river in such fits. Look
to him;" and the vice-governor fell back upon his pillow as the
servant bowed.
Put to the door, and left to seek his way, the treasurer felt that he
was lost. The count, he saw, would swear and forswear. Even if he
confessed his fault to the auditors, telling them how he had been
persuaded against his duty, the count could produce his receipt in
proof that the funds had been repaid.
Going back to his office, he sat down on a stool, and after looking at
his books and papers once again, to see that the whole night's work
was not a dream, as the count had said, he took up his pen and wrote a
history of his affairs.
Restless in her bed, his wife got up to seek him; and knowing that he
was busy with his accounts, and would be likely to stay late with his
chief, she went into his office, where the light was burning dimly on
the desk--to find him hanging from a beam. Piercing the air with her
cries, she brought in a crowd of people, some of whom cut down the
body, while others ran for the doctor. He was dead.
Like an Oriental, he killed himself in order that, in his death, he
might punish the man whom he could not touch in life.
The paper which he left on his desk was open, and as many persons saw
it in part, and still more knew of its existence, the matter could not
be hushed up, even though the vice-governor had been twenty times a
count. The people cried for justice on the culprit; and by orders from
St. Petersburg the count was relieved of his office, arrested on the
charge of abusing a public trust, and placed on his defense before a
secret commission in the town over which he had lately reigned.
The Emperor, it is said, was anxious to send him to the mines, from
which so many nobler men had recently come away; but the interest of
his family was great at court; the secret commission was a friendly
one; and he escaped with the sentence of perpetual dismissal from the
public service--not a light sentence to a man who is at once a beggar
and a count.
Alexander, feeling for the widow of his dead servant, ordered the
pension which would have been due to her husband to be paid to her for
life.